Watch Dogs Legion’s development teams, led by Ubisoft Toronto, are “embracing” the title’s recently announced delay. Seemingly, the developers see this move by the publisher as nothing short of a positive. In addition to having more time for polish, Ubisoft Toronto and Co. feel the delay will better ensure the “ambitious vision” for Watch Dogs Legion comes to fruition.
The game’s developers addressed the delay in an official statement posted on Twitter. It is as follows:
The following is a statement directly from the Watch Dogs development teams. pic.twitter.com/087pG3SXeR
— Watch Dogs: Legion (@watchdogsgame) October 24, 2019
As is often the case, a delay likely means good things for the project in the long run. After all, as noted in the statement, Watch Dogs Legion is indeed ambitious. Recruiting and making use of up to 20 NPCs at once seems an unprecedented feat in gaming. Apparently, it’s so unprecedented that Ubisoft has even had trouble with quality control testing.
In a financial call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed The Division 2 and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint both underperformed. From what the publisher can discern, waning public interest in Breakpoint specifically is due to three reasons. For one, live service games need more time between releases. Secondly, gameplay innovations in one franchise don’t always translate well to another. Players have taken notice of this much. Lastly, not much of what Breakpoint had on offer differentiated it from other live service titles, especially those in Ubisoft’s current stable of titles.
These realizations, coupled with the aforementioned games’ underperformance, led to three big projects being pushed out of their early 2020 release windows. Gods and Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine, and Watch Dogs Legion are all set to launch on an unspecified date later in 2020. Presently, it doesn’t seem the Gods and Monsters and Rainbow Six Quarantine teams have publicly addressed their respective game’s delay.
[Source: Watch Dogs Game on Twitter]